The suckler farmer with a sizzling success story after years of trial and error

John Commins has invested a lot of time and money in his Piedmontese pedigree beef herd and it is beginning to pay dividends following the nationwide launch of his beef sausages in Aldi

‘You’re as lucky as a black cat,” Tipperary beef farmer John Commins was told by his wife a few weeks ago when the country was basking in perfect barbeque weather as he prepared for the launch of his beef sausages in Aldi stores nationwide.

“They went on the shelves as 9am in Thurles, and they were sold out at 10 past and that’s when the phones started hopping,” says John.

A suckler farmer based near TwoMile Borris, John finishes and sells all his own beef though his Blackcastle Farm business and recently got the opportunity to take part in the Aldi Grow programme which saw over 75 Irish-made products go on sale in Aldi stores nationwide.

Among them was John’s Piedmontese Beef Sausages but John’s story started in the same vein as many of the country’s suckler farmers and was a long way from a high-profile retail product launch.

“I left school at 15 after my father fell into poor health and I was suckling here making no money, same as any suckler farmer if they are honest with you,” he says.

However, reading an article on the Italian Piedmontese beef breed set him on a journey he had never expected to take.

“I read the article in 2005 and rang the [Piedmontese] Society in Ireland. They happened to be organising a trip to Italy and I went along with my father-in-law,” he says.

Following the trip, he invested in some Piedmontese breeding stock with the idea that he might take advantage of the lucrative market at the time for export-grade weanlings.

“Exporting quality weanlings to Italy was all the rage then and we got this brainwave that we would breed what they want, the Piedmontese, and we would sell them back to them.”

Factories

However, it didn’t go according to plan.

“We hit a problem fairly quickly in that we just didn’t have enough numbers for them to take it seriously. If I rang a customer over there he started laughing on the phone if I said I had 20 cattle he wanted 500.”

exactly

Another problem facing John was that factories here didn’t want his cattle as they were too lean.

“They were E- and U-grade cattle with a massive kill-out percentage,

Lean operation:

John has been breeding Piedmontese cattle for 15 years the breed produces low-fat, highprotein beef but no matter where we turned no one wanted them,” he says.

With no market for his cattle, in 2010 John decided along with another breeder to create one, with support from his local Leader enterprise board and UCC.

“We got the meat analysed in UCC, and it was 1pc fat, less than chicken or salmon. However, the key question was how does it taste? So UCC brought in a panel of professional tasters and across the board with other meats they preferred the Piedmontese. We knew we had something then,” he says.

Yet after years of effort, John was still making no “real money” from the venture, and at this point his partner left the business; he continued alone.

“We were tipping away with the beef, not setting the world on fire, paying the wages and the mortgage. We won a Blas na Éireann award for pastrami and developed a HSEapproved kitchen to sell cooked foods,” he says.

However, falling cattle prices put more pressure on the business.

“The meat factories started selling really cheap meat on the Irish market and that killed us because we were going into restaurants that were buying steaks of us for years and they were saying: ‘There is a fella coming around here selling ribeye for €8/kg’. We couldn’t compete.”

Despite this, and on the advice of his wife who he describes as ‘the brains of the operation’, he persevered.

“She told me I needed to do valueadded products so you can stay two steps ahead. Selling regular beef, we just haven’t got the scale,” he says.

It was at this point he started developing bresaola (air-dried and salted) beef and other cured products. Then at Christmas, John approached UCC to help with the development of a low-fat beef sausage.

“Everyone said to me beef sausages

‘They were E- and U-grade cattle with a massive kill-out percentage, but no matter where we turned no-one wanted them’